There’s a 15-minute period at the commencement of “Hot Tub Time Machine” where matters feel rather dire: faced with a loopy plot, a competitive cast of comedians, and well, the hot tub, the film proceeds to roll out a series of gross-out jokes and an endless stream of profanity. The effort is to establish a potent tone of vulgarity to prepare the audience for the runaway-boulder-sprint of comedy ahead, sloshing around the chum to see who decides to stick around. For those who elect to ride out the booze-soaked, forked-tongued storm, they receive a startlingly alert, good-natured, borderline poignant slapstick comedy that makes the most out of a one-joke premise.

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“Chloe” opens with a clinical description of the female orgasm, and then spends the following 100 minutes displaying increasingly more frenzied examples of it. Director Atom Egoyan returns to his favorite thematic playground with this sexual thriller, working the levers and polishing the knobs on a juicily plotted, tantalizing chiller that cooks in an appealingly heated state of submission to the bitter end.

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In Noah Baumbach’s world, there’s not a soul around who isn’t a ball of razor wire just begging to be kicked. “Greenberg” arrives after the astonishing clarity of “The Squid and the Whale” and “Margot at the Wedding,” forming a mesmerizing second-wind career resurgence for the filmmaker, who’s finally sniffed out a meaningful cinematic voice in recent years. “Greenberg” is constructed with a certain determination, but it lacks authority; Baumbach’s concentrated spray of toxin has been reduced to a fine mist, adding up to a film of extraordinary pathology, but only marginal connection.

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To its credit, “The Eclipse” is a difficult film to summarize. A bizarre concoction of literary world misery and ghostly visitation, the picture takes its time unfolding, revealing horrors almost by accident as it probes the lives and loves of three characters, each with their own private reservoir of suffering to confront over the course of a long weekend in Ireland.

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Fools, gangsters, and a suitcase filled with money. Now there’s a recipe for an exhilarating cinematic adventure, filled with thrills, chills, and the quivering lure of greed. The caper “Ca$h” (the production’s spelling, not mine) offers inept cinematography, stiff performances, and Sean Bean using a kitchen sink sprayer to mimic urination. The picture doesn’t exactly live up to the sizzling potential of the genre.

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“Repo Men” is a gonzo, head-smashing, organ-tearing delight…at least 50% of the time. The rest of the film meanders about, searching to assume some form of significance. It’s a solid ground-rule double from director Miguel Sapochnik, but the picture is not nearly as deranged as it should’ve been, trying urgently to stay friendly when a nice shiny set of Verhoeven-sharp fangs would’ve done the premise more justice.

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Within the first five minutes of “The Bounty Hunter,” two different male characters find themselves on the receiving end of a swift jab to the testicles. It’s an achy, sickening feeling sure to be shared by most moviegoers who spend their hard-earned cash on this comatose, exceedingly unfunny caper. More remarkable for the glistening sex appeal of the leading actors than anything found in the excruciatingly labored script, “Bounty Hunter” is an empty calorie, brain dead waste of time.

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“Diary of a Wimpy Kid” is an adaptation of the 2007 illustrated bestseller from author Jeff Kinney, and a vociferous motion picture that feels like an endless sugar high. Aggressively irreverent and disappointingly insistent on toilet humor, the picture should’ve remained in book form. Committing it to film only encourages a strident tone I’m sure the source material never intended to produce.

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The first installment in a trilogy of Swedish mysteries based on the novels by Stieg Larsson, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is a touch on the lengthy side, but remains a corker of a whodunit. Imposingly violent, tightly plotted, and the superbly acted, the picture is an intriguing introduction to these acidic characters and world of abuse, taking viewers on quite a ride as it establishes an arresting tone of alarm and budding intimacy.

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In approaching the sordid history of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, director Marco Bellocchio has selected an enthralling operatic method to tell his tale. With deception, animalistic sexuality, mental illness, and teary passions, it makes sense to twirl this intimate tale of tainted love into a visual shotgun blast of history and surrealism. “Vincere” drives aggressively and confidently as it builds a case against the ruthlessness of Mussolini, molding a motion picture of threadbare reality, but convincing dynamism.

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Most features opt for grand statements of suspense to get by, positioning villains, weapons, and natural disasters to keep audiences glued to their seats. The Italian comedy “Mid-August Lunch” favors a more relatable route, communicating the intensity of time alone with four elderly women. A modest slice of life comedy, “Mid-August Lunch” is loaded with charm, embracing the observational opportunities that appear with a mature cast wedged inside a restrictive condo setting.

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It took 15 producers to bring “City Island” to the screen, which seems an enormous effort to breathe life into a fairly routine set of domestic troubles and idiosyncratic characters swimming around for emotional enlightenment. Fortunately, there’s a cast here that molds something passably meaningful out of a flat screenplay, instilling the material with a sense of dimension and longing that helps to swallow 90 minutes of exaggerated foibles.

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“The Red Baron” hopelessly desires to be accepted as the German equivalent of a Bay/Bruckheimer production, taking a glossy, rudimentary path toward wartime reverence. It’s a “Pearl Harbor” riff that might satisfy some curious WWI aficionados (perhaps Snoopy fans too), but offers nothing in the way of excitement or a compelling psychological shakedown of the feared pilot that ruled European airspace, eventually immortalized in the history books and on frozen pizza boxes.

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“The Princess and the Frog” represents Disney’s big comeback to feature-length, traditionally animated filmmaking. Granted, it’s only been away for five years, but a comeback is a comeback, and I’ll take any renewed interest in 2-D storytelling I can get. Playing it safe to rekindle the animated magic that once defined the Disney name, “Princess and the Frog” is a joyful lap around familiar Mouse House artistic elements, looking to help rebuild the kingdom brand name with a cushy tale of a princess, smooch-happy amphibians, and the grandeur of turn-of-the-century New Orleans.

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Lest I come across like a curmudgeon who despises all things slapstick, I’ll state that “Old Dogs” is poor slapstick. A spastic, noxious comedy, “Old Dogs” is scattershot and out of control, bludgeoning the audience with all sorts of eye-bulging mugging and dire cliché. It’s insufferable and lazily directed, trusting sheer frontal force will be enough to supply laughs. Shot two years ago, the picture has the feel of a movie that’s been reordered and reworked a few dozen times, shaved down to a pure goof-and-sentiment experience that fails both goals. It’s dreadful, but at least Disney’s been kind enough to suggest as much through their disheartening marketing efforts.

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